oṃ, āḥ, hūṃ

• +..not Faust
• +..in praise of ice (Wim Hof - not the other un-kind)
• +..Motorik-Drone

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To next consider the degree to which Tibetan art is “symbolic,” one might begin by telling a Tibetan tale. As a young merchant is about to set off for India, his aging mother asks him to bring her back a relic of the Buddha. The son sets off on his journey, but forgets her request until he is almost back home. Coming upon the skull of a dog, he extracts a tooth, wraps it in silk, and presents it to his grateful mother, who worships it fervently, doing prostrations and making offerings daily. Soon the tooth begins to produce small pearls (ring bsrel) and emanate a rainbow light, as authentic relics do.57 The story is thus told as an illustration of the power of faith. But a variation on the story (provided by Thurman and Rhie in Wisdom and Compassion) adds a fascinating twist. After presenting the dog’s tooth to his delighted mother, the son begins to feel guilty and decides to confess his deception to her. The Buddha—more precisely, the Jowo (Jo bo) statue in Lhasa, the most sacred image of the Buddha in Tibet—appears and dissuades him, explaining that the relic is authentic, that the Jowo himself had magically placed the dog’s skull in the son’s path, so that the tooth was actually a manifestation of the Buddha, that is, of the Buddha’s image in Lhasa, a relic created by an image. The son is convinced when he returns home and finds the tooth surrounded by a rainbow halo.
Lopez, Donald S.. Prisoners of Shangri-La